New Software Begins To Bud For Apple Operating System

You don't have to wait for Apple Computer to update its operating system to improve your Mac's ease of use.

There's been a revival of sorts in development for the Mac, much of it grass roots. Amateur and professional programmers are coming up with some wonderful tweaks to the operating system.

One good example is a piece of shareware called FinderPop. (Shareware is software you can download and try out without charge, but you are expected to pay for it if you end up using it.)

For $8, FinderPop offers a great improvement on the function of contextual menus in Apple's latest version of its operating system, OS 8.

Contextual menus is a feature that lets you access a menu of commands by just clicking on the screen and holding down the control button on your keyboard.

It's built into OS 8, but Apple's version gives you only a limited number of commands, such as move a file to the trash or get information about it.

These commands are only the beginning with FinderPop.

For starters, it simplifies the use of contextual menus by eliminating the need to hold down the control key. You need only click and hold down the mouse button.

Do that on the desktop and up comes a useful menu that includes items called FinderPop, processes and desktop.

FinderPop is a folder in which you can store aliases of your most frequently used files, folders and programs. Point and highlight this folder to open it and jump right to any items inside.

The processes folder holds a list of every active program, which you can highlight and choose.

The desktop folder contains icons for the hard drive and any floppies inserted. Users can highlight and navigate through them to find and open any file.

You can also see what's inside any folder with FinderPop. Just click and hold down the mouse pointer over a folder and up pops a list of its contents. You can then move, copy or delete any item within a folder.

Like any good Mac program, FinderPop is highly customizable. You can set the fonts and size of any menus and folders.

You'll find it on most of the big Mac bulletin boards, including MacWorld, Webintosh and MaCNN.